During a lengthy email chain with some members of my family, the following exchange occurred:
Will: Don’t you people have jobs? It must be nice to get paid to dick around on email all day.
K: I know someone working in IT isn’t asking about jobs. Anyone one whose job it is to wait until something breaks to actually work shouldn’t be talking crap. Don’t you have an x-box hooked up to your computer at your desk? I know you spend all day on x box live until someone can’t figure out their Excel document!
Will: Just b/c your IT guys are lazy sacks of shit doesn’t mean that the entire industry is that way.
K: I thought it was a prerequisite for the position. Come on, you don’t have a “game boy product” at your desk right now? Don’t lie.
Will: I’m done with this conversation.
I was pretty mad at this point, so I just stopped responding. A few of our readers would consider themselves techs, whether you do maintainance, coding, or whatever. What do you think? Is he right?
Some have a tendency toward laziness, certainly. But there is a real cap to it.
If you slack enough in IT, your knowledge becomes outdated real fast. At the very least, you need to learn new versions of stuff; there isn’t that much of a market for ASP 3.0 developers or Windows 2000 administrators.
Also I think “K” misses three important points:
* programming and administration are very different professions; conflating them is like painting a cardiologist, a podiatrist and a psychiatrist with the same brush
* good IT admins are proactive, writing scripts to do things like check everyone’s available hard disk space and monitor server performance
* some administrators are intentionally standoffish, so that users will learn to take care of their own problems (e.g. making sure that they are plugged in before calling someone in a panic that their computer is broken)
I couldn’t have put it better than that. My brain locked when I tried to respond, to say something that touched on your first bullet point, and I had not considered the second or third. Since I was faced with debator’s block, I just left the conversation.
You know… A lot of folks won’t consider me a tech, but I am in the “fix it” catagory. Yes, my job is waiting for people to break something. However, I have a back full of scars and burn with arms to match. All the while, like the first replier mentioned, keeping abreast of new technology and codes. Yes, even a “wrench turner” like me needs to learn new codes and procedures. If not, we go the way of the dinosaurs.
On another note, I hope the person on the other side of the debate is a technical field. If not, he/she is trying to spout knowlege from an empty well and needs to do some research before damning a field as lazy.
Wow, Interesting topic. I agree with snowie. I’m not considered a Tech either. But in case something goes wrong, the first person on it is me.
I don’t think “K” is in the field. If the person was in the field they would realize that Tech’s have to know the DO and DON’Ts of any and all aspect of their profession. While some professions only focus on the DO’s. I, for one, think its much more of a difficult position being a tech. As Grossberg said, You basically cannot sleep on the job, for fear of one day realizing that you can’t fix or remedy a problem.
Are Tech’s lazy, Hell no. I see how crazy it is when its time to run around and fix the smallest of problems. It comes to a point at which its unrealistic. My girlfriend works in the Fasion business, Co-operate level. When I hear the stories that she tells me about these CEO’s and High level exec’s, I get sick to my stomach. For example: Her CEO, her boss, called the IT department because she needed a Document printed and could not, for the world, figure out why its not printing. When the IT guys came up to see what the problem, her computer was off. You believe that sh*&, her computer was off. Ten minutes later, another call was made because the problem still was not fixed. The IT guy again returned to see what he can do only to find out she unplug and turned off the printer. Thats crazy stupid.
The world as we know it, is not use to codes, mapping, and development. We see things for what they are like the face of watch or clock, oblivious to the gears and machinism right behind that face. So, being said that, do you think that Techs could be lazy, and the answer is “NO.” We won’t allow them to.
I need to put my two cents in this one. The thread email that you read to post your opinion on was taken out of context!! It was said as a joke not a snide remark against someones profession and what they do on a daily basis. The origin of the email dealt with how much one should spend on someone else for christmas and from there it branched off to be an explosion of jokes and bullshit, and as one of the recipients on that thread it got me through my mundane monday. I love you like my brother Will and sometimes I must say you take things to heart, you do amazing work and is quite knowlegable in what you do, you know how “K” can be sometimes and what he said is not a reflection on you and what your work ethics are, go back through the emails and read how everyone (mostly me, “K” and “S”) were doing all the responding and half the time we were cracking on eachother (yeah we might have been dicking around but didn’t you get a chuckle out of them). It was just something to do to pass the time at work.